Both residential and commercial buildings contain various user friendly sources of audio signals as well as other, different types of sources for originating electrical and audible signals indicative of various conditions. The user friendly audible signal generating units, for example, include wired and wireless intercoms. Such units make delivery of audible messages throughout various regions of a home or a commercial establishment convenient and immediate. Such units can be implemented as substantially stand-alone intercom-type systems or can be integrated into other types of communications devices, such as one or more telephones distributed throughout a residence or a commercial establishment.
Other signal originating sources are quite unlike the audible signaling units, both electrically and mechanically. Typical examples of signal originating units include various annunciators, such as doorbells, conventionally associated with the exterior doors of residences and some commercial establishments.
Other signal originating sources include security systems, such as fire or burglar alarm systems, which at times generate electrical signals indicative of one type of alarm condition or another. In such systems, the electrical signals are often converted to audible alarm indicators. Other types of signal originating sources may also include heating or lighting systems, radios, televisions, audio reproduction systems, telephone ringing devices and the like.
While there may be one or more annunciating devices associated with each such signal originating sources, at times it is desirable to add additional output devices both locally and remotely from the source. Even adding identical types of annunciator devices to a given originating source can be difficult and produce unsatisfactory results. For example, adding another annunciator to a given signal originating source will subject at least the output portion of that source to an additional electrical load. At times, there are fixed limits as to the number of annunciators that may be used in connection with a particular source due to available power or regulatory requirements.
Where the source does, however, have the electrical capability to drive one or more annunciators, running wires or other electrical connectors between the source and the annunciator may be difficult, even on a local basis. In some instances, it may be effectively impossible to run wires for a more remote installation of an annunciator. Additionally, annunciators associated with different types of systems are often not interchangeable and have very different electrical characteristics.
Various systems may also combine multi-detector monitoring devices with a common control unit and one or more operator communications panels, which include a keypad, a display and an audible output transducer. Communications between the detectors and the control unit may occur in wired or wireless media.
Audible indicators of detected conditions, such as audible or visual alarms, can be provided via such operator communications panels. Multiple different detectors can be coupled to separate interfaces, or to a common interface, that in turn provides communication with the control unit.
While effective, known monitoring systems are designed to provide indications of predetermined conditions. Such known monitoring systems typically accept as signal sources a limited number of different types of detectors, and are not intended to support a bidirectional transfer of verbal information.
As a consequence, a need remains for systems or other devices that would facilitate coupling disparate types of annunciators to a variety of different originating sources, both locally and remotely. Preferably, different types of signal sources could be readily mixed and in some fashion coupled to types of annunciators that otherwise might not be used with the respective sources. In addition, such systems preferably should also enable users to communicate audibly with one another. Preferably, such systems would be user friendly, readily installable, and usable with both a variety of signal sources and annunciators.